Pages

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Forced Education

I know some people have been asking me to start commenting on news and especially local news. Here's a good story about how EPISD goes around trying to get dropouts back into school, no doubt nothing short of a noble cause. Below is a link to the official story.
EPISD combats high drop out rate.
What is the problem with forced education in the first place and is the EPISD doing a good job to society by trying to bring the students back to school?
I'll first bring up trying to get the dropouts back into school. Why are these kids dropping out in the first place? What are the socio-economic reasons the kids are generally dropping out of school? It seems as if these issues aren't first addressed EPISD will be a dog chasing its own tail. I can have a blog SERIES on issues like this that are caused by government intervention. We as a society might address what causes problems not the end result of the problems or else the problems never go away.
Now what about forced education instituted by government? I can quickly lay out many problems on a moral and economic foundation that hurt society more than we think it might help it.
Moral Foundations -
1)Using force to make people do anything, even if it's "for their own good", is nothing short of slavery.
2) It should be up to the parents what the children to do. For those skeptics I'm sure most parents would rather have their children be in school than not be. Besides, no amount of government could change the minds of those whose opinions would differ.
3) If the student so chooses to not go to school and disobey the parents then it their choice to do so. If the parents want him to go to school but he doesn't want to they have the choice to make him leave the household. It would then be the in that students best interest to take full responsibilities for himself and live his life.

Economic Foundations -
1)By forcing students into school when they would rather be working artificially lowers the supply of workers which distorts the market.
2)People who would gladly provide competition for work are not allowed to and would therefore be forced to be out of work instead of being a productive member of society. In need of money but not being able to earn legitimately.. hmmm... I wonder what that would lead to.
3)Poverty would NOT increase as many people would think. Not many people want to live in poverty but are forced to go to school instead of work. Forcing people to waste time when they could be working and providing for themselves and family is morally and economically wrong.
Let's get government out of our lives. We will become more educated people, more prosperous people, and more free people.